


the boy with the smile

by warlockholmesx (hungryghost)



Category: Dungeons & Dragons (Roleplaying Game), Dungeons & Dragons - All Media Types, Original Work
Genre: Angst, Based on a Dungeons & Dragons Game, Cults, Gen, Minor Character Death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-28
Updated: 2020-05-28
Packaged: 2021-03-03 02:08:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,041
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24407071
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hungryghost/pseuds/warlockholmesx
Summary: Hesitation kills. And proof that it does has been following Magpie everywhere since the night she let Ochek die.----An introspective angstfic I needed to get out of my head. Based on my D&D campaign.
Comments: 2
Kudos: 4





	the boy with the smile

**Author's Note:**

> Hi! I wrote this short fic after a particularly harrowing session in my D&D campaign, in which my wizard Magpie’s party ventured deep into the woods to retrieve the bodies of two fallen adventurers—only to witness a cult’s summoning ritual, and learn that one of the “fallen” adventurers was actually a cultist named Razael, and the other one, a gnoll named Ochek, her sacrifice. And they arrived right in time to see Ochek die.
> 
> Magpie was more shaken than she thought she would be. But what’s worse is that soon afterward, a sweet half-orc named Vilberg, the town's golden boy and Ochek's best friend, asked the party if he could start traveling with them.
> 
> And she couldn’t look him in the eye.
> 
> So here’s a little fic about what was going on in her mind on one of their side quests (in which they were sent into the woods to retrieve a lost dog named Boy). There’s a bit of horror and a lot of angst—and maybe implied one-sided Magpie/Vilberg if you squint, since I wrote this when my friend and I shipped them two years ago. I hope you like it! Or that you feel something. :)

Magpie isn’t used to people smiling at her. The adventuring party she travels with aren’t a smiley bunch; Amity’s smiles are brief flashes of white in her paperlike face, Vall smirks or grins or scowls rather than smiles, and Michael’s grins, though broad, have a worried edge to them. But to be fair, they haven’t had many reasons to smile since returning from the Church of Pelor deep in the Dawnmist Pines. 

_Magpie_ hasn’t felt right since that night. She doesn’t wake up screaming from nightmares like Amity does, but her heart feels leaden and heavy, and even in the bright light of morning, she shudders and has to wrap her arms around her for warmth.  
  
It’s not the Crawling King that scares her, though she and Amity have worried about the betrayer god enough for the entire party; nor is it the shadow-wreathed hand emerging from the tapestry. 

No, what scares her is the _bodies_ —bodies stabbed through with daggers, hanging from the dungeon walls, and missing limbs: man, woman, child, gnoll. It’s the _screams_ she hears in the back of her mind when she thinks of the red-skinned hobgoblin whom they’d interrogated above the dungeon, his black eyes glazed over with fervor. The screams she ignores as she, in her memory, looks him in the eye and buys time for herself. Anything to make sure she knows what she’s getting into. That even if no one else does, she. will. survive. 

“Those screams,” the hobgoblin says, and she hears herself say from far away, “It sounds lovely, doesn’t it?”—

—and suddenly Magpie is back in her body, hunched over and retching, with cold sweat prickling her arms, the nape of her neck, and the small of her back where her clothes have ridden up since sitting up in bed.

\----

It’s her fault, isn’t it. That Vilberg is here at all, with his huge fucking arms and huge fucking greatsword and that huge fucking smile that makes her heart clench painfully in her chest whenever he turns to look at her.  
  
If she hadn’t waited—if she’d killed Ugnak as soon as she’d heard the screams down below, rather than distracting him—if she hadn’t ignored Michael as he said that they needed to stop the ritual—if she hadn’t been fucking _blind_ in the ritual room, _fuck_ human eyesight—

—maybe Ochek would be alive and Vilberg would be safely home right now. 

Maybe right about now, the tall half-orc would be wiping his face with a towel after a long day hammering away at steel and iron, meeting Ochek for drinks, and planning their return to the Dawnmist Pines together. Maybe Vilberg would be laughing at his mother, baring his neck to the village elder, and looking up with a smile to see her smiling back at him.

But because Ugnak had said the word “dog” that night—because it hadn’t registered to Magpie that his priestess was sacrificing a _gnoll_ —because the grinning doglike creatures who populated Turstfield made her skin crawl—because she’d immediately thought, _At least it isn’t_ human—Vilberg is traveling back to the Dawnmist Pines with the group of strangers who brought Ochek’s body home, his best friend’s face carved into the hilt of the dead hobgoblin’s greatsword so he will _never forget_.

So when Magpie passes Vilberg in the glow of the campfire that first night, offering to wash his bowl after dinner—why? Fuck if she knows, she can’t fathom it either—and he immediately stands as if to stop her, before saying, with a genuine smile, “Thanks, Magpie,” she wants to throw up.  
  
And she almost does. Once Magpie is far enough away from camp, bowls in tow, she sends her familiar Poe to perch on a tree branch above as the half-orcs prepare for their watch. 

“Watch him, you hear me?” Magpie says hoarsely, and the raven’s head tilts to the side before it lets out a caw and disappears, leaving her in the darkness. 

And then Magpie leans her forehead against the cold bark of an elm tree, ignoring the nauseous fluttering in her chest as she tries to breathe.

\----

So she stays away.  
  
When the party’s newly found dog, Boy, leads Magpie and Amity back to camp, then blinks right into an astonished Vilberg’s arms, Magpie keeps her distance, her pace slowing as she watches their happy reunion and the groggy movements of Vall and Michael in the morning light. 

As Amity walks over to accost Vilberg for “not sparing one minute to tell us Boy is a _blink dog_ ,” Magpie feels her lips twitch into a smile until she thinks, unbidden, _Vilberg really likes dogs_ —and she digs her nails into the palm of her hand. _No._ No.

And as they mount their horses and follow Boy deeper into the woods, Magpie thinks of the time not so long ago when she and Vall had stumbled into the forge late at night and seen the half-orc blacksmith hard at work on a sword and asked him, _Hey, can we use the forge, too?_

Magpie remembers it like it was yesterday: the sheen of sweat on her forehead and neck, her bare arms, her breath caught in her throat as she summoned her familiar for the first time. Seeing the raven poke its head out from beneath the ashes and meet her gaze with its intelligent one. Vall standing at one of the braziers, clapping Vilberg on the back, and proudly saying, “ _Magic_ , my man.” The awe and wonder on Vilberg’s face as he watched magic happen right before his very eyes.

And Vilberg’s proud face as he held his newly forged greatsword out to show her, his eyes aglow, the carved face of the young gnoll she didn’t save gazing up at her.

So Magpie lets Poe fly ahead of the party, past Amity and Vall, until it’s just ahead of Vilberg and Michael. She loops her horse’s reins securely around her forearms, tugging at them to be sure. Then she inhales, blinks—and suddenly she’s high above the path and the trees, free.

Magpie doesn’t look back. She _can’t_ look back.

And she makes sure to stay far, far away from the boy with the smile.

**Author's Note:**

> When you create a D&D character, they come to life in broad strokes, and the more you play them, the more real they become. 
> 
> Magpie started out as a simple, quiet, tough-as-nails character, but as time passed, she revealed herself to be complex and very, very flawed. And something I only learned while writing this fic, post-session, was that she didn’t like gnolls much; she hadn’t met any before reaching Turstfield (a town with a large gnoll population), and they scared her. And that hesitation cost the party a life.
> 
> Magpie knows better now, but you can see her guilt lingering in her thoughts and interactions with Vilberg. 
> 
> But don't worry—since then, she's more than made up for it.
> 
> Hope you liked it. :)


End file.
